Some more writ(h)ing

A long while ago, now, it somehow became an overriding theme for the media to approach everything as critically and negatively as possible. The reason for this was because the US government had been outright deceiving the voting public about a great many things during the Vietnam War, and this sort of "there is no doubt the government is lying, it is just how much" kind of approach was actually very informative and important. People really learned about the extent to which the government would go in order to ensure the agenda of various interests.

At this point, however, that theme has been run into the ground. It is as if every single person who comes into the public eye must be thoroughly examined and their inevitable seedy agenda exposed. It us as if every positive person has to be deconstructed to the point where their flaws are revealed. In addition, it's like every seemingly positive person that comes into the public eye is also being set up to be revealed as a dark creature indeed.

You have to wonder, is it the notoriety that corrupts the person, that they are pumped up to the braking point by the feeling of power or invincibility? Or is it the pressure of the media attention, that causes them to amplify a shocking dark side in order to get that attention turned off once and for all?

Because anyone who has observed the trajectory of the once-media-darling now discredited stars, televangelists, athletes, coaches, product spokespeople, politicians etc. sees that once that seedy underside is exposed, they disappear to be left alone, mostly in anonymity.

I don't think we are entitled to know as much as were told about these people. We are entitled to know some things in cases where they are asking for donations, making claims about products or processes. If they claim to be particularly moral along the lines of done traditional sense, for example, then they should live up to those claims. But if they don't, then they shouldn't be held to some popular sense of morality.

The astonishing thing is that many of these public figures seem to make claims that they are the exact opposite of who they truly are. It is very strange. Again, is it the notoriety that gives them this sense that they will not be found out?

An even scarier thought is that this can happen to anyone who finds themselves in this position. That some kind of switch gets flipped, and they start testing the limits of the "public eye".

It is just really weird.

What is going on?

HYPERDYSTOPIA

So, some wild shit has gone on. My phone went missing. I have not posted for a long time.

A bunch of bad/weird things. I think some !/+=###//==# has gotten hold of some of credit card info, because some weird crap showed up. My phone got stolen also yes.

But, I continue the word electronic music.

On Sunday nights, every third week, I play music. Mostly to an empty room, it is a restaurant and bar downtown.

I have laboured lo these many years and continue to do so. Someday I will be dead, but that has not occurred.

My thought is today the United States is being dismantled. It is very sad. Long term, the remaining population will be used for medical experimentation under the guise of "battling cancer" and other crap.

The various military equipment is being "recycled", that is, key components ate being removed so these are no longer working. New equipment under construction is being sabotaged, while the actual, viable designs for this new gear are being siphoned off elsewhere.

It is bad. Very bad.

De facto, at this point, the world can be sectioned into three new Orwellian "super blocs" that vie for control, but will never achieve it.  EuroNorAmWestPac, SinoMoscvastan, and IndoAfricaSudAm.

The key insight that brings the mind to th is conclusion is the appropriate de emphasis of the middle east. The middle east is part of IndoAfricaSudAm.l, the "resources bloc".

I am using a cell phone. It has auto complete. I have wished with it, and will no longer struggle worth it. Whatever it spotlights,b is right. It knows Howe typo spell better than I, so why not? App have your way you little protect of ship. This is encoding rust over could only Jupiter for.

So the world is not veering sliced up, and the last Rothschild had been given a taste for ecological woofers. Radiological woofers can only've be found in um spotless areas, where Baroda governments gave preserved there. There are being used as COLLATERAL. This was not supposed to be allowed. Bit, various DiCK heads permitted outit, one in particular.

The north important thing: the Indians, the native nations, become guarantors off the land and it's peoples by haVing signed their treaties worth peoples.  With THOSE peoples, not the banks or anyone else. Do you see? Triad is why so much history has been against three INDIANS, the Native Nations. Because they signed agreements with PEOPLE, not Banks.

So this is why one should escapade t top tribal lands.m, to be close to THE Indians.  My pHone will not allow net typo risk tippy add quicker as I need, doo you must doggie poor the works. The woofers that room am writing can be deCided, and them you will know.

The last hands of poker are being played. Various people have other purple under Control, and them there is a trail to the bank. Each one is anchored in the bank arty the end of the chain.

We don't have good without pull, we don't have pull without the bank. No food, no purple. New legions of purple, stupid people, super stupid, ate being pulled into three places once held by learning, growing people. Went? Because they ate used to serving dictators. Europe is being flooded with stupidites, who will gladly serve whomever butters their bread.

That is all. I am sitting and dying.

Poetry and poverty

You can't spell poverty without poetry...

Beautiful broken arches paper thin soles
Of my feet aching with every step
The world sucks, sucks me down with gravity
To the grave, gravity pulls down down
Over and over again the message repeats:
Will you take the challenge, the hollow challenge
Posed by talking ashtrays and open noses
Posing, losing tossing away the entire mess
Of a life most wasted, wasted living?
Do you have a living room?
A rhetorical question most well rounded,
Massive open lungs sucking air
Sucking hard, the mud and the stench
Covered by sweet blue ooze.
Dare we consider it, the future the past
At last we fast, nay eating another way to suck.
Broken broken, aching soles: feet in a nother dimension.
Slow moving, witless yet with just the right amount of fat.
Seven different nutrients all with deadly intent, still making
Meaning, greening, keening like a hawk on the roof the tiny
Birds are my food, with which to feed my brood.
One can be certified insane, but never certified cured.
Inured to the moment, pressing on to belong, for a song the odd intent.
Motion, lotion, consume the potion: inside an ocean of lament.
Where is the dignity? Where is the trust?
We see ineptitude and consume it with lust-- superior feelings,
Feeling superior like the giant lake: so much fresh water!
And so deep! Filled with wrecks and the corpses therein.
The Rex of Lakes, so potent are we! Moving like ligers on trampolines.
The mind numbing boredom of it all, an awl for the ears, keeping them open,
Painfully conceiving with every detected vibration some new strange being.
The ontology of monotony, providing nothing but a bolus of empty solace,
Solace! The cup of bleck, dark schmeck the dreck is endless. Feckless.
Recklessly he plods ahead, instead. Gravity sucks, does it suck to be dead?
It may suck less, yes: I'd guess, but why leap that chasm? some stupid last spasm
It never occurs.
A drifting off, more like. I held my mother's dying hand.
She lay so quiet, but whispering with each breath "I'm here".
Here, so dear, so near and still so far far away please fly.
I know you had to die, but now?
It was such a stupid time.
To think, that
they'd never leave.
Love,
My love.
The mourning dove each morning mourns,
Sorrows borne anew with every passing day
The paper thin soles, pain in stepping,
My instep instead intends to reach, to overarch,
But the balls! The Heels! The painful aching hurt,
It really sucks, this gravity. The force, not the weight of words.
Not the fetid lump of thought flow trapped in icy letters, characters all.
Strings of them, involved in feats of deliberate magnitude!
I helped move the lifeless body to the stretcher, with it's clever cover.
A vessel emptied, a life lived. But to the full? I can hope only that life
Lasts after life, my father's wife deserves this.
What a stupid time.
Young
Dumb
Man
Without a plan! Roamed the earth, sought refuge, refuge from that storm
To Which each and every one is subjected! Idiocy! Rather so.
Why would that one wave from the curb, from the curb on a street in a dream?
Waving and smiling, silently like that, dumb yet brilliant, my brave teacher.
Strange choice: it's said that all in a dream is from within you.
Of course it is, how could it be otherwise?
Playing a role, to control, the fear within. The storm without, raging.
Clattering against the side of the house,
Nuts loosed from the trees.
Walnuts, chestnuts: horse chestnuts these, simmering sounds, slamming hard like bullets
Into the whitewashed stone.
What a storm!
Trees uprooted. Made the news.
So much suffering.
Sells good soap, good news. Strage soap: Dove. Take the challenge.
See if film, that sinking stinking wretched type of film will apply,
Then dissolve. Soap scum, they call it. Soapy scum, tainted with lye.
With lies, swift abandon.
She lay there,
empty.
The vessel, so light! She'd finally lost all that weight.
stupid time. All the time is stupid time: you know that I know it,
And you know that you live it, we live it all the time.
The moment unfolds before our eyes.
What is it?
Connections are attempted then fail, the holy grail, we've now set sail again.
To distant shores, where snores abound. We've run aground, but the silly soldiers wait with spears.
Too many times I've ignored this way, these crimes of passion.
Too many times the lines are jagged, blurred. In a word: broken.
Unspoken and unfettered the fleeting thoughts will wander where they will.
I will, when I will it, it will become as one with the son in the Sun of summertime we manage peace.
Yet a piece of it remains, right here: in this son of one who was a son of one who...
Endless on and on. Stupendously stupid on and on.
Where are your friends?
Where is that light?
Friends are treacherous things, they lie.
Surprise you when you least expect it!
I'm engaged! I'm enraged! Turn the page, this stupid arrgh.
Arrgh! How stupid, lost for words?
They float, like fetid turds in bluest goo.
Was it her perfume? No, it was dinners doom, bought from food trucks,
Meters deep. To sleep, perchance to scream!
My wife hates it when I do that.
No solace there, hah. The cupboards bare. The mouse's lair,
Crumbs in piles abandoned.
For the cat's away, but even still the poison did its trick!
He embedded himself instead in the radiator, there to stink: that empty vessel.
Fucker. What a dick, to stink up the place like that. What the hell? Really.
You eat my food, you drink the morning dew and then leave a fucking putrid corpse you sack of shit!
Now, *that* sucks.
What a pain,
My paper soles. Paper thin, with dried leaf veins. So you say it, so it is.
Wish it were otherwise, that it were no so:
So sewing into one's final shroud, oneself.
With words,
Stitching quickly. No real reason.
I hate this season with it's wicked rain,
Cold like a bitch? No, I'm just bitching. Stupid saying, stupid times. Bitches are hot, like glowing irons.
Irons, glowing: now isn't that ironic?
Supersonic, superhypertronic stereophonic hijinks. With an ancient Bogen way.
Not the 42 Bogon, but the one with the golden hue. So true! My ancient box, glowing tubes.
Those things are silly, stupid things again. So much in here!
Like a shitty attic, full of just crap, really.
Stupid crap. What the hell?
What's that smell?
Oh yeah: that fucking mouse, jeez.
How lame.
Rain is sorrow, rain is the tears of the departed: it's a saying among the indians of the southwest.
They're the best, those ones: bright jewelry, so pure like morning sun over the mountains. Beauty all around.
Walking in beauty, erasing the dew, that simpering slippery sorrow of bygone souls.
I slipped on a toad, once. In the grass, slick with morning dew. Delivering papers.
I stepped down, hard, to toss the paper in its plastic sack,
Over the backyard fence.
That's when I stepped on the toad, and slipped. Caught my balance, but...
It was awful! Oh it crunched and yuck, eck: yeesh, etc..
Now that sucked. Especially for the toad.
"Thanks for that, you huge bastard!"
"I had a day planned, and everything"
And everything.
My... wow. Goodness.
Is there any left? I mean, to call it mine?
Who knows.
What a load, it pulls me down. Pressing on my paper soles, my bones,
In a sack. Relax, it's only a toad.
Now I've done it,
Slipped the track, lost the trail. Fail. No holy grail here, dear. My mom again?
I have no friends, like Deputy Dan.
Firesign Theatre, I was a fan. Now there's a bunch of bawdy bards!
Repackaged now, momentum lost, tossed to the wind. "A murmur in the heart of Philadelphia"
Their words, not mine: the only good ones on this page I think.
You're all over the place, a disgrace. Without a trace I wander, tasteless, mindless. Soul-less?
Goodness gracious, not at all like that. Please, why for? Wherefore? no more.
Rotten to the core.
Bore.
Hah, a label I will wear, you make it: I will wear it.
"Hello, my name is..."
Who gives a fuck? You have been forced to wear that label, I know it.
Like everyone else here at this fucking seminar.
"Hello, your name is..." some stupid dickhead forced to wear a fucking nametag, you dumbshit.
"But there was a door prize!"
Is that what it's come to?
A doorprize?
You emblazon yourself with your huge stupid nametag,
Practically forcing me to read it?
You are a fascist,
And that's all there is to it.
Put that on your stupid nametag,
Better yet, let me put it there: I will carve it in with a knife!
Hold still you bastard!
Ok: that wasn't fair.
Ok: there was a door prize. We all wanted it.
A dark paneled oaken door, with burnished brass accoutrements!
Who wouldn't want such a door?
What wonders must lay behind it.
I saw that door in a dream, I wanted it: I must have it.
In the dream it was a double door.
Stately, oaken, sturdy yet swinging open to reveal...
Clouds.
Just clouds?
What do you mean "just clouds"?
Clouds are vapor, water vapor. Icy, and superior, just like the aforementioned lake.
Feel them, can't you? Before the plague, you could see them from a plane, close up.
A dog barked. I heard it.
Time to let him in.

Ukraine, BRICS, future, end. Crazy talk, right?

The last blog post covered the importance of Ukraine. This one unfolds the plan that the Putinic Circle has for all of mankind. This will seem crazy, until you reflect on what has happened since 1991.

In the nineties, we in the US and Europe anticipated decades of unprecedented peace. The Soviet Union, slavering devourer of half of Europe, contributing to the delinquency of fledgling third world countries and scheming evil empire, had fallen apart like one of its many hastily poured concrete apartment blocks.

But, like many of the previously anticipated strings of peace decades, the first one was squandered. Rather than look forward, we sighed and started to wind down. The Cold War is done. No more Mutually Assured Destruction hanging over us. In the U.S., the biggest news that decade was the President receiving some extramarital genital stimulation while on the clock.

Meanwhile, Russia was forming the ex-Soviet states into a loose confederation, and seeing actual capitalist activity starting to occur. However, this activity was oddly "carpetbagger" in its nature, where people like the robber barons of Soviet anti-Western rhetoric came to life. This wasn't apparent at the time: we perceived what we wanted to.

People of means, who may have acquired those means in an unsavory way but maybe not, were collecting industrial assets. That's the way it should work, right?

But the acquisition of these assets was roped off for a select few. Oil and gas, steel, paper, mining, aerospace... all of these things that had been built with the intention of outpacing the West were being bundled into portfolios for exclusive investors. This was discussed in the previous post.

That activity created the oligarchy that we see today. Now, in the first years of the 21st century, we saw what we thought was a Russia finally entering into the economic compact of nations, to take a proper place therein. We weren't paying attention much, of course, at that time.

That was not happening. At the same time that we were heavily preoccupied with a semi-fictional war on terror, Vladimir Putin was planning the future of Russia, and using Russia's military in key places across western Central Asia in order to secure pipeline routes.  These were required in order to bring oil and gas from that region to European customers that could pay with hard currency. Industry and government working hand in hand to serve the purposes of a few... hmm, what's that called?

We were lulled into complacency by the mild Mr. Medvedev, seeing reforms slowly moving across Russia. We knew Mr. Putin was the real power holder, but we were seeing what wanted to. However, as we see now, all of these reforms could be rolled back almost overnight.

Back to the Russian "robber barons": most of the shell holding companies owned by the billionaires of Russia were created "offshore" through western banks and legal mechanisms. These holding companies are like empty shopping carts. The Russian assets they were filled with were secured by aforementioned dubious means, to the sound of grumbling, squawking smerds in Russia, some of more articulate of which were silenced for good. Only "smerds", this was becoming crystal clear: not a population whose will should be represented. Again, we in the west saw what we preferred.

Then, in the last few years, in the twinkling of an historical eye, we see the autocratic totalitarian streak that ran through the Soviet era reconstituted full force. People being murdered here and there in KGB-ish style. We see a large part of the Russian people embrace the long missing strong leadership embodied by Mr. Putin. We see the gas fields of Asia under fascist Russian control. We see a mechanized land army destroying chunks of European cities in Ukraine, changing borders.

Now, in the present: Putin has discarded any and all pretense, driven by the inspiration of nationalist thinkers who see Russia rightfully at the center the world as a dominant power. A plan had arisen from this.

And now, the plan is accelerating.

First, the BRICS bank will be created. Ukraine is a real pain at the moment, a problem, but will be brought to some "workable" arrangement with sufficient control.

This bank will allow the Oligarchate as well as shady elements within the Chinese establishment to launder any monies as needed. This network of capitalist reserves will fund various "projects", including those that deliver arms and other assets into the most capable anti-Western hands. Also, this is likely a bank without true audits.

Iran will assist in identifying and fortifying those elements in the Middle East that will best lead to the establishment of a Caliphate strong enough to impose borders that assemble the assorted squabbling ethnicities into more amenable bins. Iran will cover all with their newly built nuclear umbrella. Israel well shriek, but it won't matter, because it's all held in a state of "next move is final checkmate".

Russia economically subjugates northern Europe with a combination of energy deals and military demonstrations, along with promises of security. Europe sees how quickly Russia could move in militarily. The cities of Europe are valuable, valuable economic clockwork engines that can't be smashed even a little. Yeah, all that hands across the ocean stuff is romantic, but it doesn't stop speeding tanks with systems that blind pilots.

Europe ditches NATO, looking to Russia to supply security. The wolf is guarding the henhouse.

Now, Ukraine is a problem because it is a mechanized force's magic carpet into the soft belly of Europe. This is an important point. But it's also a demonstration area that will show how much of a European city just a little of the mechanized army can destroy.

Meanwhile, note how each of the oil producing  countries outside of the Middle East that the U.S. depends on are "infected" with an insurgency or rogue element of some sort. Nigeria has Islamist fanatics. Venezuela it's pro-Cuban factions. So all of these oil centers have receptacles for BRICS backing funds that will help them neutralize pro-American factions.

Then, suddenly,  the unified Islamist contingent will bring southern Europe under its military control, as the wolf holds open the door for the foxes, at the same time the wolf militarily subjugates any remaining European regimes that require it.

Security agreement? What security agreement?

Russia, the allied Caliphate, India and China now have de-facto control of all of Europe, and all of Asia. Brazil has de-facto control of South America.  China has also chipped away at Africa and Oceania, establishing de-facto dominance there.

European books and historical records are destroyed to make way for a new, improved history and culture. People are taught a new reality.

This is the plan of the "New Axis" for the next three decades. Ambitious? Yes. Science fiction? Maybe. Read a little about "Eurasianism", it worked out splendidly for Genghis Khan.

Dramatic? I will not say. Why I worry about this should be clear: should it happen, it is the end of artistic freedom, of human expression, of freedom of belief and the beginning an endless era where vast majority of humanity is reduced to utter slavery.

Possible? You decide.

Ukraine's Multi-Dimensional Importance

There are many things that are clear about the nature of Ukraine prior to the ouster of their President Yanukovych. One of the clearest is the extent to which the government economically sapped the people, requiring bribes and kickbacks at every stage of any business deal of significance, and the other is the extent to which the Yanukovych and Putin regimes were identical.

It's extraordinary how quickly we're learning all of this: the billions of dollars spent on the Sochi Olympics, with the obvious errors and cost overruns being something a source of humor, but also an indicator of how deep the corruption runs.

Then, the well documented rise of dubious oligarchs who somehow procured portfolios of Russian businesses despite living in a society where investment capital was nonexistent was mirrored in Ukraine, and even amplified.

Almost incredibly, these people seem to have no sense of duty to their foreign customer base, their local customer base or, with minor exceptions, any sense that they need give back at all to the society that they stripped of its commercial value.

We don't understand what it is like to live under a totally corrupt government. The police coming up and demanding money because you are in a public place. If you have a job, you need to bribe landlords to keep your place, along with extortion level rents-- and if your address is in a nicer neighborhood, you just might be visited by goons and asked to leave. If you own a business, the rules have been crafted so that every single transaction has some bribe or kickback involved. There is no judicial branch to appeal to: they're all in on it. There is no "congressman", "councilman" or news outlet to write to. They're all in on it.

This is the situation that precipitated the revolution in Ukraine, and it explains the behavior of all the people involved. If you were one of the thieves, you saw the jig was up and you ran. If you were one of the victims, you couldn't take it anymore. If you were retired, getting a pension, you were maybe upset by the upheaval.

This sort of revolution in Russia is what Putin fears most: that the Russian people that have been fleeced just can't take it anymore. They start to protest en masse, and the minor, then major, regime functionaries see that the jig is up: they stop following orders and go with the tide.

The grab of Crimea raised Russian's hopes for a while: at least someone else was getting fleeced, even better to the surprise and embarrassment of the snooty and foppish EU, and especially the arrogant and conniving anti-Russian US.

Over it all, their President commanding a podium on the world stage, confident and forceful: not like the clowning Obama or the flustered Merkel!

But with that grab, Putin wrote off Ukraine. If he could cause the rebellious country to fall apart, so much the better--  volunteer mercenaries wanting adventure might assist with that, they would be equipped. So, some eager beavers were given the opportunity to field such a force, and equipment staged near the border with Ukraine for their ready use.

This is what happened: it was planned well in advance, the core units were trained, more recruited. As an garnish, an inspiring story involving historical precedent and privilege was spun and wrapped around the whole plot.

People in Ukraine have experienced some real hardships. Many of the people in the East above 40 are not highly educated. Farmers, factory workers, miners. They were trained under Soviet rule not to expect much, but to expect at least something along the lines of welfare no matter what, and this runs through that demographic.

This is the key, you see: in the Soviet "workers paradise", everyone was supposed to own the means of production. If that was so, then their 'slice' was auctioned off at a bargain price, or maybe not even auctioned but simply "transferred" through corrupt clerical sleight of hand to a cunning oligarch.

Putin has identified the US as having the purpose of thwarting Russia: the U.S. wants Russia to have zero advantages in his view, and the U.S. strives to ensure Russia is marginalized, inconvenienced and disrespected.

It seems this way because Russia is a corrupt state and acts as one, where the U.S. is much less so. The U.S. prefers to work with countries that share the same sort of notions of reciprocal regulation, open investment and commerce, where Putin's Russia will put up with what they have to, but not because  they think it's a good idea. For example, foreign investors in Russia being arbitrarily dispossessed of their businesses through specific machinations of the bureaucracy is ok, if that's what the leadership wants and thinks they can get away with it.

What has happened iin Russia and Ukraine is truly frightening: people have been bribed, threatened, violently injured and worse so that a cadre of billionaires, are mentioned in the sanctions, could have their businesses for cheap and expand their portfolios. This is the way they operate, it is what they know and they want the whole world to be that way. No anti-trust mumbo jumbo, no FINRA, no SEC: just straight ahead ultra hostile no bounds set acquisition. They have amassed the wealth to be able to operate that way with impunity in Russia, and irritates them it's not like that everywhere!

So of course they see  U.S. as making up rules that make it hard for them to do what they want, just to irritate them. This is what an egomaniac would think.

Understand, then, that Ukraine is currently a battleground where this amoral, self-serving clique of billionaires wants a cozy pocket of corruption to operate in. Thanks to these Russian military adventurers, the attempt is is being made to carve this out of the eastern portion of the country. At the best, they will achieve their aim. At the worst, they will be a constant source of disruption for the government in Kiev unless they're completely defeated.

Russian arms and fighters will continue to be pumped into this situation unless the Ukrainian army can close off the border securely. Then, without resistance from the people actually living there in Donetsk and Luhansk --poor people, battered people, people who stand to lose everything-- the billionaires' henchmen will continue to have their way.

It doesn't seem hopeful: the city of Donetsk is built to hold a million people. It is an valuable economic asset. Even if all the non-combatants leave the city, the occupiers will force the Ukrainian army to destroy portions of it, which they already have. The night fighting equipment, stealth aircraft, the armed drones, the laser guided munitions that the U.S. is able to bring to bear in narrowly targeted strikes are not in Ukraine's arsenal.

Instead, both sides are using "Grad" (Hail) systems, aptly named multiple rocket launching systems, artillery, and air ground rockets that saturate an area with explosives. The sorts of things you aim the best you can and hope you don't hit the wrong things. The most useful platforms are those in the air, but the Russian occupiers now have support from sophisticated anti aircraft missiles.

Russia is acting as much "within the rules" as it thinks it has to-- that is, as much outside the rules as can away with. All the other countries involved are acting within the rules because they are the "keepers" of the rules, but also because it's comfortable.

It's coming down to this battle being fought in the hearts and minds of each Ukrainian involved: will they take arms and which side? Will they hide, and if so can they report intelligence on social media-- but for which side? Or will they leave, and for where?

Each decision inches the vector of history this way and that.

Flight 370 Scenarios

First of all, it is a very somber thing, that has happened to the people aboard that flight. I think of this situation and my thoughts become quiet: this appears to be a very awful thing, no matter how it happened. I'm not writing this as some sort of "sensationalism" because this blog is very much unsensational. There are few pictures, not a lot of interesting or useful info outside of a very narrow scope, and even what is provided within a narrow scope is spurious at best.
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Before I start, one thing first: CNN is really more than a little asshole-ish. I was listening to CNN on SiriusXM radio, and their whole angle was "boy, now that the good ol' US of A has their equipment in place, boy, we really have found out some stuff right?" and they would ask that question in one form or another, overtly or less overtly, to the various people they had on. Which is really pretty... well: asshole-ish.

But, I'm writing these things down so I can tweet the link and then maybe some feedback, but most likely not. I enjoy reading conspiracy theories, all kinds, to make my imagination run wild.

So here my "not too crackpot but most likely fairly crackpot theories" about Flight 370.

SCENARIO ONE: Really, really, really horribly bad misfortune:

The pilots flew as planned, towards where the flight was scheduled to be flying, and everything was lined up for a smooth flight. But moments after they sign off, a catastrophic mid-air collision with something occurs, or something wholly unexpected and damaging to the plane occurs, and the cockpit is rendered instantly a) depressurized and b) un-enterable, as well as leaving the pilots mortally incapacitated.

Because of this, in their last moments, the pilots react as best they can, heroically pulling the plane up and turning towards the next nearest landing zone with all their strength, but then lose consciousness and slump forward, bringing the plane down and swinging it on a wild heading. This has the effect of decompressing the cabin, which causes the emergency oxygen masks to drop down for the passengers. But these only last for so long, after which the passengers also slip into unconsciousness and then, so very sadly, pass on.

The plane makes a wild looping turn, and as a result it, horrifically, enters a "seam" between two radar zones. In addition, a fire was raging in Indonesia, which may or may not may have limited radar effectiveness there. However, the bottom line is that the plane's diversion goes unnoticed.

One or both of the heroic pilots' now lifeless bodies now slumps against the controls. The cold high altitude air along with the process of death renders them rigid: horribly, the turn they intended to make is followed by a random one, now tragically "locked" into place.

Another variation on this is the plane being damaged somehow, either through sabotage or natural act, where the pilots lose key systems, but retain yet others. Again, they set on a heading that will take them to the nearest landing area, but circumstances prevent them from carrying out that contingency before their end.

Another variation is a huge mistake: a very incorrect heading is put into the computer, which takes them in a very wrong direction. Somehow, this goes unnoticed by the pilots, and they fly on until it's too late. This seems very farfetched.

Another variation is that a malicious crew member with access to the flght deck for some reason decides to sabotage the flight and set the wrong heading into the computer. Or that a virtuous crew member somehow tries to turn the plane back around after both pilots become unable to fly. The pilots guide them through a turn, but then succumb to their illness, nobody is able to operate the plane, then never can make contact with the ground given the heading they are on? Also very unlucky and farfetched, but if not again really sad and awful.

The plane continues on it's course, hugely off course over the most remote reaches of the ocean, runs out of fuel and falls into the sea.

So awful. Too awful for words, a horribly tragic story that will bring about all sorts of preventive measures.

Actually, regardless of what actually happened, if any of these variations are remotely plausible, it should bring about all sorts of preventive measures to address this question-- what should happen if both pilots are unable to fly the plane in the absence of any sort of criminal plot, and there is either nobody on board who can fly it or the cockpit cannot be entered?

SCENARIO TWO: Crew complicity in a mass murder and possibly suicide

This is the more straightforward one or the most complicated one, depending on the variations, and there are several variations of this scenario. The primary gist is that one or more of the crew decides that, for whatever reason, this planeload of people is going to be one where everyone deserves to die, with possibly a limited exceptions, or not. But, they cause all the passengers to die, after which they plug in a course that will take them over the most remote reaches of the ocean, where they run out of fuel.

If it is just one pilot, he has to kill or otherwise incapacitate the other, then barricade himself in the cockpit. He decompresses the main cabin, deploying the masks for the emergency O2 supply which, as in the first scenario, finally runs out and kills all the passengers. Maybe it is both pilots. Maybe it is multiple crew.

Then, the plane is brought to a lower altitude and the remaining human(s) on board either cruise[s] on into the night psychotically enjoying the quiet and waiting for the plane to run out of fuel. Or, the plan never included dying:

Once the passengers are dead, the conspirator(s) rob[s] the passengers, taking as much money, jewelry, and other small valuable belongings as possible in the time remaining until the plane is over a planned drop point.

The conspirator(s) break out jumpsuit(s) and parachute(s), then parachute[s] from the plane over a coordinate where a previously anchored a small boat awaits.

The plane flies on into the night, eventually crashing into the sea.


SCENARIO THREE: similar to two, but with passenger hijackers.

Hijackers demand that the plane turn around and goes to Australia. They have thought ahead enough to demand headings that will take them around radars, but not far ahead enough to know how far they can get at what altitude with the fuel on board. The pilots try to convince them that there is not enough fuel to do what they want, but of course the hijackers don't believe them.

When it turns out the pilots were correct, they attempt a landing in the ocean, which is far too rough to handle such a landing.


Any of these things ends equally horribly for the people on board, but those are my crackpot theories.

Ukraine/Russia, part two: the other side of the coin

If you do a Google search on "how did russian oligarchs get so rich" the results are interesting. One, there are a great many articles answering the question with a title almost identical to the question. Two, there are a lot of answers from relatively reputable sources, and some from less reputable sources.

But the answers are interesting, and they start with the failure of the Soviet Union. Did the Soviet Union really fail, and if so, why?

Yes it really failed. It was not a coup, it was not a foreign orchestrated collapse: it failed. It failed because the only way it could keep going was to borrow money from some of the very same concerns that it's founding philosophy reviled and threatened to tear apart. This is an important point: a house divided against itself cannot stand.

Why did it need all that money? A simple answer is that the Soviet Union plowed billions of dollars worth of effort, that is man years and materiel, into building a modern society without providing increasingly valuable material incentives to the people doing the building. What does that mean?

What it means is that if one has a leaky roof and miserable food, and you give one a chance and say "hey, work for me and you can earn a fixed roof and better food", then they will work for you only if that actually happens. In many cases, that did actually happened in the Soviet Union: people got more than they had by working for the state apparatus.

But, once you have a fixed roof and better food, then the next stretch of work you do should earn you even more and better: a patio, or a bigger apartment, etc.. Thatt only makes sense: because if effort "X" pushes you five miles, then that same effort should push you another file miles, or at least close to that. If it doesn't, then you don't expend the effort. Why bother?

Once they saw that that next five to ten miles was going to be very hard, the Soviet state put huge amounts of effort into telling people that the things they had were enough, and not to look at the things people in the West had as desirable, while at the same time all Soviet plans revolved around making the Soviet state have everything and more than the West had. It couldn't, because it wasn't realistic, and things that are unrealistic become unreal. So the Soviet union collapsed.

I didn't mention anything about corruption, because it is a term that implies a certain context. The context is that there is a society which values rules based on the rules' intrinsic value: you are honest because it is a virtue, because truth is highly valued, because truth is what lies at the basis of all advancement and knowing. This is a belief system, you can ascribe to it or not. This particular society chose not to ascribe to it. There was no corruption because it was all corruption. Rules were written, there was a constitution and written documents describing rights, but there was a societal unspoken agreement that these things were meaningless: for show.  People couldn't leave the country, they simply were not allowed to unless they escaped.

Why was there such an agreement? Because people had been systematically murdered, imprisoned and banished based on being processed by state sanctioned miniature lynch mobs who decided that the accused had too many material possessions or were otherwise undesirable. So it had been established as a key tenet of the system that human life was not intrinsically valuable, therefore anything deriving from the notion that human life had intrinsic value was null and void. So the State could write these things in as flowery a language as they might like in order to impress Western idealogues, but everyone involved knew it was a fabrication: that some denouncements in the right ears could ruin a career or end a life. The only way to get ahead was to game the system, to build alliances. So people became very smart at doing that.

Back to the subject at hand: because the State did put a lot of money and effort into certain things, when it collapsed, those things still existed on a fairly large scale: paper mills, concrete plants, oil refineries, aircraft manufacturers. Because people also knew where the state started, and where it ended off. They were clever survivors, they were the industrious, they did build things, they were smart: people who wanted to accomplish things and found a way to do this despite everything else. Because they had some values that made then want to build a better world for their own pride and for their children. Because they were people who cared about learning, because truth could be found there.

But, at the time things collapsed, all of it was in disrepair, almost all of it had been mismanaged. Some factories produced aimlessly. Others were filled with betrayed and hostiled workforces.

Even so, these things were worth something. How much? and to whom?

Now, what SHOULD have happened? Wasn't all this now the property of the people? Shouldn't some sort of voucher or share system been put into place, where everyone got an equal number of shares? Then, shouldn't it have been sold off to the highest possible bidder, who would then fix it up and get it running again? Then shouldn't the people have been able to redeem their shares, or hold onto them?

Maybe. But who would make sure that would happen? Probably.But the government wasn't going to sprout a unified patrician wing overnight, if ever.

It seems like the absence of the notion of a socially active, philanthropic patrician class in Russian society is a product of its isolation. i'm not an expert, but it seems like the most notable projects to "improve the quality of Russian life" were undertaken, this was of the sort of scale and type that would further enrich the rich. Philanthropy is viewed skeptically, as a way to avoid taxes, launder money, or provide a project as means for an associate to snag a lucrative contract. It takes many years, maybe generations, of wealth and stability to produce such a patrician outlook, tempered with pragmatism, and with a certain preference for a cherished cause. You have to focus on something.

But that didn't happen because of all that had gone before. To someone in the West, it was a huge gamble to invest. Some investment occurred, and some of that was gleefully gobbled up by ex-Soviets with a grudge. Very risky, very adventurous investment that would not pay off in the short term. But, for someone in Russia, there was no capital other than state owned, which meant borrowed or "liberated" capital.

How could anyone afford anything? Well, because Soviet society was corrupt, shrewd and connected people of course did have more than others and that was that. Because the remaining society continued to be corrupt, certain clerks could be handsomely bribed to record various transactions that transferred the ownership of any number of these things that had never had ledger sheets, or appraisals, or valuations. Who could blame them? All of a sudden you are in a position where you can finally leave this ailing country that was falling down around your ears: a nice bribe under your belt would do the trick. From the point of view of the would-be oligarch, a million dollar bribe that helps close the deal on a $100 million dollar business is a huge return on investment. Theoretically, if the government is corrupt all the way up, so much the better. It's just a matter of the right amount in the right pocket.

This same sort of things happened in the 1980s in Texas in the US, although somewhat in reverse, when real estate had been artificially elevated through the machinations of government assessors working hand in hand with real estate speculators with large "extended families".  Rural real estate near booming cities could be had cheaply. They would pick some of this up, flip the land between one another, sometimes within hours, back and forth, and with each transaction the value would go up. Use the equity to secure loans to build developments on that land: a game of hyper-Monopoly that was finally unraveled when the developments didn't sell as well as projected.

Nobody is unblemished by some kind of corruption, either handed down by history or directly. But how many revel in corruption, owe their existences to it?

So, the oligarchs are really the most advanced products of Soviet society: cunning in their ability to work the crumbling Soviet system, shrewd in their choices of business alliances, quick to learn the nuances of gaming the Western system: setting up offshore holding companies where they could hide their direct association with transactions, pragmatic in their acquisitions and willing to apply ruthless, violent force if needed.

There is a saying: "Earth's Security, Human Integrity". It is true: if large scale abandonment of integrity occurs, this includes the abandonment of the discernment of the valuation of truth and the lack of courage to state it, this results in the inabilty to be true witnesses to the evidence of the real consequences of our actions, and we lose the planet.